Energy and the environment are often at odds. As America’s energy production reaches record levels, controversies over the environmental impacts of energy development dominate the headlines. More often than not, the result is costly litigation and lengthy political battles.

The debate is particularly intense on Colorado’s public lands. In the past five years, nine of every 10 acres proposed for oil and gas leasing in the state have been formally challenged. Plans to sell leases in the North Fork Valley and the Dinosaur area of Western Colorado provoked waves of protest this month. In response, the Bureau of Land Management deferred the sale of the controversial leases.

Although some conservationists celebrated the delay, many remain wary. During his State of the Union address last week, President Obama proposed to accelerate oil and gas permitting on federal lands. It’s clear that battles over energy development and environmental protection are not going away any time soon. Read more…

In a lot of ways, Colorado’s economy is just now rebounding from a crippling recession that lasted for years, claimed countless jobs and waylaid our state’s real estate market. Our comeback from the brink of collapse has been fueled in part by surging energy exploration, which not only has generated high-paying jobs across a broad swath of Colorado but also has helped restore stability to many other industries and economic activities.
Now, all of that recent success is at risk again—this time, because of action by our own state government.

New regulations promulgated for energy development in Colorado threaten to wreak havoc with the state’s entire economy. The rules, approved recently by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, will stunt Colorado’s thriving energy sector as well as backfire on a whole range of economic life — from agriculture, to home-building and construction, to economic development in general. Read more…

The election is over but the debate over alternative energy and clean-tech programs is not. Energy Department loans or loan guarantees given to now bankrupt companies like solar panel makers Solyndra and Abound Solar along with troubled electric auto maker Fisker or battery producer EnerOne raise serious questions about those federal funding programs. The latest program under new investigation from Congress is the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) from which producers generate Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs).

RFS, RINs? What? A similar false market system for carbon tax credit trading already exists in Europe and there are similar proposals here. If those proposals become law, a new batch of acronyms defining a fake market with real dollars attached will be born. RFS’s and RINs are hard enough to grasp for now.

Under the RFS program, the government requires the use of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. When a producer makes renewable fuel like ethanol or biodiesel, the producer is required to generate a renewable identification number or RIN to match the quantity of fuel produced. Petroleum fuel producers are required to buy RINs from renewable fuel suppliers to earn credits to meet the renewable fuel rules. RINs are often traded between companies to help achieve compliance in renewable fuel percentages. However, because of the lack of oversight, there are currently hundreds of millions o fraudulent RINs in circulation. Read more…

Drive north from New Belgium Brewing’s headquarters in Fort Collins, and you’ll run into Ponnequin Wind Farm, where 44 turbines churn out power for the Colorado grid. Drive south, and you’ll find a factory owned by Vestas, the company that built many of those very same turbines. The evidence is all around us: Colorado is a wind power leader.

The state generates about 17 percent of its electricity from wind, and more than 5,000 Coloradans are employed in the wind power sector. At New Belgium Brewing, we believe that good business should also be good for the environment. That’s why we include renewable power in our energy portfolio, and we support our neighbors working in the wind power industry.

We want to see wind power prosper, but if you have been following recent headlines, you’ll know that it hasn’t been easy. The wind industry has shed thousands of jobs, including at least 500 in Colorado. Manufacturers like Vestas are closing down plants and research facilities, and they’re citing policy uncertainty as the culprit. Read more…

Such results reconfirm oil and natural gas as bright spots in an otherwise dull economy. In a free market, profits signal that a firm has transformed inputs into more valuable outputs. In the aggregate, more profits than losses equals economic growth. Compare this to the losses (resource misallocation) being registered by government-subsidized energy sectors such as wind, solar, battery makers, and electric vehicles.

Yet anti-oil activists were quick to condemn the above third-quarter earnings as evidence of excess in the American oil and gas industry. This is hardly the case. The economic success of the industry boosts not only jobs but the investment of working Americans. In fact, a recent Sonecon study found that through both periods of expansion and recession, the average rate of return on investments in oil and natural gas stocks was seven times greater than the returns from other assets. Read more…

The best billboard for solar power is a solar panel. People are captivated and inspired by solar panels quietly at work producing clean energy. Last month, Americans saw tens of thousands of these billboards through almost 600 American Solar Energy Society (ASES) tours of homes, municipal buildings and businesses in 38 states, each demonstrating the use of clean, affordable solar power.

Americans have consistently expressed widespread support for solar power and for state and federal policies promoting its greater use. According to a recent Hart Research poll released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), 92 percent of likely American voters favor solar energy and want to see solar as a growing part of the nation’s energy mix. Democrats, Republicans and Independents, young and old, men and women — across all regions of the country, all support solar energy.

Voters aren’t the only ones electing solar. Smart businesses are turning to solar, too, because it’s good for their bottom lines. Walmart, IKEA, Macy’s, REI, FedEx and Walgreens are among the top solar users highlighted in a recent SEIA report on commercial users of solar. These companies mount solar panels on their warehouses and stores to control rising energy costs, save money and stay competitive. Walmart alone uses enough solar to power stores serving three million customers a week. Read more…

The debate over energy policy is national in scope, but the most important conversations are taking place in the states. Here in Colorado, for example, we take pride in our role as a national wind energy leader, generating the third highest percentage of power from wind of any state.

Last summer we saw the addition of Enbridge’s Cedar Point wind farm in Limon, built by Colorado-based RES-Americas, which generates 252 megawatts of electricity—enough to light up some 80,000 Colorado homes. The result of a $535 million investment, it’s the first project in the state using all-Vestas turbines from three of that company’s Colorado plants, which employ 1,700 workers. At its peak, the project generated 200 construction jobs, and it will require 25 full-time employees for ongoing operations and maintenance.

This good news story is being replicated across the country as homegrown wind power has doubled over the past four years, to 50 gigawatts, sufficient to power 13 million homes and retire 44 coal power plants. Particularly exciting is the fact that since 2005, the percentage of U.S.-manufactured components in these wind installations has jumped from 25 percent to 67 percent, keeping nearly 500 factories in 44 states humming.

The 2012 presidential campaign has been noteworthy for both candidates’ relative silence on the importance of public lands to hunters and anglers. The candidates ignore sportsmen and women at their peril. Hunters and anglers have high voting rates, and represent an important piece of the US economy. Hunting and fishing, for example, pumped more than $75 billion into the national economy last year.

The more than 45 million Americans who hunt and fish depend on public lands for access, quality habitat for fish and wildlife, and abundant hunting and angling opportunity. In a new national poll released last month, hunters and anglers not only believe that conservation is just as important as gun rights, they also strongly believe that the protection of America’s public lands should be given priority over producing oil, gas, and coal on these lands.

In 2010, President Obama’s Department of Interior announced important oil and gas leasing and drilling reforms intended to continue multiple uses of our public lands while safeguarding fish, wildlife, clean air and water. One of the biggest champions of Interior’s promised reforms was Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development (SFRED), a coalition of more than 500 businesses, groups and individuals led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited. Read more…

You mean film stars Darryl Hannah and Mariel Hemingway managed to draw all of 200 people Tuesday to Denver’s Civic Center to protest hydraulic fracturing? Why, you could probably get 200 people out to protest fluoridated water.

Still, the protest was instructive in one respect. As The Denver Post reported, “speaking to the crowd Tuesday, Sam Schabacker, an organizer with Food and Water Watch, said, ‘Fracking has no place in Colorado.'”

Notice: No place. He doesn’t want it regulated more rigorously. He wants it banned — and, since the vast majority of wells are now fracked, with it would go much of the oil and gas industry in Colorado.

But look on the bright side: Maybe without oil and gas we wouldn’t have to endure so many energy intensive visits from Hollywood activists.

Every American and every business relies on energy, making it one of the most important topics of this year’s presidential election. The good news is that by developing the energy resources from our federal lands, we can simultaneously reduce consumer costs, spark new economic growth, and increase our energy security.

The Blueprint for Western Energy Prosperity shows that by 2020, the West could produce as much oil and natural gas on a daily basis as the U.S. currently imports from Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria and Colombia combined. In addition, if western oil and natural producers were allowed to develop the vast domestic energy resources found on federal lands, investment in the region could double to $58 billion annually and direct, indirect and induced jobs could increase by 16 percent.

Unfortunately, bureaucratic red tape, redundant and burdensome federal regulations, and the unending specter of litigation are standing in the way and preventing western states from realizing this full potential. Read more…

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

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